Summer yesterday winter today!

Well this day was Hard with a capital H. I started out with hotel breakfast and packed my gear.

Omelet with coffee and juice, yum!

I left Gostivar with no problems aiming for Mavrovo National Park and the plan was to go towards Debar after that. A short ride after Gostivar I found a small village where the villagers shook their heads when I said I was going to Mavrovo by the route passing their village - in hindsight I understand them. It was a nice village tho with damns with like hundred upon hundred of fish!

Fishies!

Ponds of fishies on the right!

After the village I got onto smaller roads, and I ended up being chased by 4 big dogs, they just barked away tho and their owners came running like mad to stop them. Ceasar Milan could work 100 lifetimes in this country and not get away the anger in all these dogs.

After them dogs left I started a steep climb on stone and mud roads, after a while I reached a beautiful spot and shortly after that an tree looking to fit in Lord of the Rings.

Panorama of mountain village.

Me, my bike and Treebeard.

At the picture above I had pushed my bike mostly up steep, horrible stone and gravel roads - when I saw a small pile of snow I smiled to myself thinking I wasn't expecting that. But it got alot worse, the road consisted of stones, sharp ones that made pedaling impossible, then to mix things up alot more snow started to scatter the road with tracks from big offroad motorbikes. The parts without snow was mud and leaves that got stuck at the brakes on the bike together with snow and then it started to pour down raind - all this while pushing my bike so my arms hurt in roads going like "s" and steep upwards.

After a long while I reached asphalt, I couldn't take pictures of the road before that due to rain however a shelter near the road just before Mavrovo made it possible,

Just after reaching top of the worst road I've ever seen. 

After reaching Mavrovo town my toes was freezing and my hands as well, the shoes and gloves are the Achilles heal of my gear so far - mostly because the shoes are summer shoes with a lot of venting so the rain goes straight through and the gloves seem somewhat waterproof but not completely

I was so cold so I cut the route short and check into a hotel as there is active ski season here still, 3 Swedish mil took 5 hours compared to a training run back home in Sweden when I did the same distance in 2 hours.

A well deserved pork chop with fries and Macedonian coffee afterwards.

Tasted as good as it looks.

After dinner I strolled away to a shop for some late night snack - this church is quite a known tourist attraction here and its usually half submerged below water but it was low tide I guess. Still beautiful at dusk.

What was great about today is when it was the hardest on that damn hill climb and I was freezing with snow up to my ankles and rain showering me I noticed several times I smiled to myself despite the sweat pouring and my heart beating like a jackhammer - I am living my adventure.